February Garden Chores

At first glance, February doesn’t seem like a busy garden month. It’s cold and rainy, and still very much the dead of winter.

But! It’s also just a mere matter of weeks before the first seeds get planted into the ground, and so it’s high time to get everything ready. Cleaning up and preparing the garden for the plants that will go in later in the spring can be a dirty full-time job, but it’s absolutely essential to get it done if you want to have a successful growing season.

Here’s what I’ll be doing this month!

In the Garden

Lift the remaining rutabagas: The rutabagas, those hardy Swedish root crops which I let overwinter in the garden, are probably extremely woody and tough by this point. It’s time to take them out of the ground and gift them to the chickens.

Uncover the garden: We’ve had the garden covered with plastic sheeting since practically last year. It has looked incredibly ugly and I have hated it. But, hopefully, most of the weeds and thatch will have been killed and reabsorbed into the soil, giving us a clean slate to work with.

Define and build permanent beds: My ultimate goal for the garden is to implement no-till permanent raised beds. I know the terms “permaculture,” “back to Eden,” or “lasagna gardening” can sometimes be thought of as hippy-ish, but honestly it just makes sense to me. Rather than tilling and weeding and amending the entire garden area, slowly depleting the nutrients and eroding the soil despite what we amend it with, we’ll layer defined planting areas with newspaper, manure, leaves and compost and then cover it all with wood chips. These will slowly break down, feeding the ground beneath them, and we’ll just keep adding more good stuff on top. The soil will be healthier, it won’t be compacted, we’ll weed and water less and we’ll be using free, sustainable and natural materials.

Dig in lots of well-rotted organic matter: February is the month of love, and gardens love manure! They love compost! And I love gardens!

Cover with tarps again: Just in case. To kill any weed seeds. But it won’t stay on all summer this year, I promise!

Sow early seeds indoors: Despite the cold weather outside, now is the time for me and other maritime gardeners (zone 8, right on the cusp of a and b) to start sowing seeds inside. I’ll be starting all my tomatoes, eggplants and sweet peppers this week, as well as my first sowing of brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and cabbage. I’m also going to start some green onions and lettuce, and hopefully get them into the greenhouse by early next month!

In the orchard

Prune the fruit trees: This chore honestly scares me little, because you’re basically cutting off parts of your tree and what if you do it wrong? The trees could die! But really though, pruning actually helps reinvigorate trees, reduces problems with pests, and boosts fruit production. Jasper and I are going to start with the easy stuff, like getting rid of suckers, dead or injured branches and water spouts, then we’re just going to give them a haircut!

Prune the marionberries and blueberries: As with the fruit trees, so with the fruit bushes.

Feed all the fruit trees and bushes: Now is the perfect time to feed all your fruiting things, too. I spread a very little bit of wood ashes from the fireplace around the base of our apple and plum trees, and I will be adding well-rotted compost to all these, then a layer of mulch of some kind.

In the greenhouse

Clean up, clean out: The greenhouse is so, so messy. And dirty. And filled with stuff that we didn’t put there but never bothered to take out, either. So first and foremost, we need to clear it out completely, and then give it a really good deep clean. Scrub the walls and sweep out the cobwebs. And weirdly, I can’t wait.

Dig in lots of well-rotted organic material: The greenhouse has a dirt floor, so we plant directly into the ground. That means we need to pile on more manure and compost each year, to keep the good stuff coming.

Cover walkways with something: Last year, not knowing any better, we laid straw over the walkway in the greenhouse. The plan was just to keep the dust at bay. Then we turned on the automatic waters, and the walkways grew! We had a nice crop of grass all along the walkway, from seeds that managed to survive in the straw. So, this year we’ll either be putting down cardboard and wood chips, or plastic. Something. Anything but plain straw.

Direct sow the carrots and radishes: I don’t know if these will start growing in an unheated greenhouse in February, but the weather has been rather warm and I’m up for an experiment. So I’m going to sow some and see!

February is the shortest month of the year, and it certainly feels that way as we scramble to get everything done on time. But it’s a good scramble, knowing that at the end it will be spring. Spring!

And then we will be in thick of it, happy with dirt under our fingernails once again.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

Hey, I saw this post in the Community Pool!
I absolutely love this fresh insight into what it is to be a farmer (something a lot of us will probably never know first hand) and the way you’ve used bold headings to indicate each chore. While the content is important, I’m finding it difficult to scan the information itself–even though there is a lot to talk about, I think you could look into formatting.
For example, the bold heading is great, but consider using some bullet points within each heading! I think that would help for those of us who are certainly not farmers, but would like the basics of what each chore represents.
I also think you’d benefit from hands-on photographs of the work–such as the result of replacing the beds. It’s complicated stuff, and it would be cool to see it in action!
The picture of the orchard, for instance, doesn’t really indicate anything about the work being done, but the photo is rather being used as a separator to show that we are moving to a different part of the farm. Take advantage of the unlimited space you have for photos!
Great article, all around! -Michelle

Your garden is going to be SO badass this summer! I agree, February is definitely crazy prep month! We would be planting peas at month end if we were staying here so it’s weird just tossing poopy duck bedding onto the beds (the new owners are getting the raised beds, whoever they end up being, as we’re going to build new ones when we land out there). How does spinach and the like fare out there? Usually I’d be planting that outside right now as they’re my first things I get going since they’re pretty hardy…

You will love having permanent raised beds – I have had them 5 years now and can’t imagine planting veggies in the ground. My first ones were scrap wood but they disintegrated and now our existing ones are cinderblocks, so when we move they’ll be a bit of an expenditure going to cedar but soooo worth it!

Looks like you have a busy month ahead! It definitely felt like spring today. I spent a fair amount of time out planting, separating bulbs, raking and other fun spring-like things. I hope it rains a bunch more, but I can’t tell you how good a bit of sunshine and warmer weather felt!

How wonderful! I’m a novice gardener and this sounds amazing to me. Very snowy here still but I hope to start some seeds next month. I think we are Zone 4-5 so it’s cold here. I did better with my flowers last year and my son and daughter did well with their pumpkins, few tomatoes, and squash. Hopefully, we can expand it a wee bit. 🙂 Amy

I’ve been realizing how much work needs to be done in February/March around here to prepare us for the coming season. For us, we don’t do much until next month, but before February has come and gone, we should have our seeds ordered and a plan for our garden! My husband has been pruning our trees recently, and I’m just itching for the ground to thaw a bit so I can start doing some garden clean-up that I failed to do last fall! You must be so excited!